Psychologists have found that recalling the detail of shouting matches and disagreements could help people keep incidents in perspective and stop the triggering of self-doubt and even depression.

Family squabbles over Christmas? Re-playing arguments in detail may be the best way to cope with them

The British way of dealing with family quarrels may be to sweep them under the carpet. Yet re-playing upsetting or annoying events like an argument in your head and recalling what happened in detail can in fact be therapeutic and prevent you getting quarrels out of proportion, or becoming depressed and anxious as a result.


The advice, which comes at a time of year when tensions tend to flare up, is designed to help people keep upsetting events - including family squabbles and being forgotten from the family Christmas list - becoming deep rifts with damaging psychological consequences.

Psychologists have carried out a series of experiments and found that dealing concretely with moderately upsetting events such as arguments, which includes reviewing precisely the context of the event, how it unfolded and thinking how things could have been dealt with in another way, can be the best way to keep them in proportion.

But dwelling on why events happened and what an incident means about you or other people and its potential consequences could lead to overgeneralizing to other situations and tip into feelings of worthlessness and depression.


Professor Ed Watkins of the Mood Disorder Clinic at the University of Exeter, who has researched the impact of overthinking and ‘rumination’ on mental health, found startling improvements in mental health among people who learn to run through upsetting events in concrete detail in this constructive fashion.

Professor Watkins said: “Christmas and the New Year can be a tricky time for many people’s mood whether it be due to the colder and darker weather, the often common family tensions and quarrels, which sometimes lead to the reopening of old grievances, finances being tight, or the triggering of unfavourable comparisons with how we want to be this year or against “picture-perfect” ideals of a Merry Christmas. We often see this in an increase in referrals for treatment for depression in January and February. Staying with the details of what happens and keeping it in context can be one way to prevent these challenges of the festive season becoming something worse.”




A clinical trial in patients with clinical depression found that daily training in spotting warning signs for stress and then reviewing stressful situations in a concrete way – by paying attention to the details of what could be seen, heard, felt, smelled and the sequence of what happened – over 6 weeks significantly reduced symptoms of depression, outperforming treatment-as-usual from the GP alone.

His findings can be applied to all situations in which people overthink difficult situations, including helping to reduce anxiety in teenagers and students about tests and exams and the depression caused by conflicts in relationships.

Professor Watkins said: “We know that rumination about upsets and losses is a big factor in getting and staying anxious and depressed. Often clinical depression can follow a difficult life event, such as losing a job, the end of a relationship, illness, or being trapped in a stressful situation. Furthermore, once people are depressed, the normal hassles and challenges of daily life can themselves lead into more rumination and get blown out of proportion, further fuelling the depression. So being more concrete by reducing the negative impact of daily hassles can help people to come out of depression,”


Date: 26 December 2016

Read more University News